I'm just getting back into gaming, built my last rig 5 or 6 years ago and wow has a lot changed. I was originally going to slap a 7970 in after reading its the best performance for the value right now but have also heard they run really loud.

I plan on running at 1980x1080 on a 24" and want to play modern games on max settings and be a bit future proofed.

I'm not sure what card meets the requirements and what is overkill. I won't be gaming on multiple monitors so is a 7970 unnecessary?

Figure to spend $200+ for a card that'll last 2 years and ~$300 for a card that'll last for 3 @ 1080p. At least, that's how it's panned out for me. Spending much more than that just isn't worth it. So, if you are an AMD fan, look at the 7850 and 7870. If you are an Nvidia fan, take a look at the GTX660 and 660 Ti. Read the various reviews and get a feel for the 1080p framerates, both minimum and average as well as the noise levels.

In general, I like the Asus Direct CU II and MSI Twin Frozr cooling solutions. Note their effectiveness various by gpu model and their implementation (see the SPCR review of Asus' 7870 to see a bad implementation).

I like the Nvidia 6xx cards more than the AMD 7xxx as they use much less power when you have two monitors and when you are running low intensity tasks like video playback.

I have preferred Nvidia over AMD in the past for gpu's and would rather stay Nvidia if given the choice. I'm a little confused on all of the options however.

It looks like the GTX660 Ti is considered a better card then the GTX 660. And then you have different companies doing their own spin on the card, like Asus, Gigabyte, Sapphire etc. Is there big differences within these companies? It looks like some might overclock the card and then do their own cooling setup, is that right? Pardon my ignorance.

For 1080 single monitor setup would you say a GTX 670 is overkill and the 660 Ti is the sweet spot at this time?

Looking at the Techpowerup review, averaging over 18 games, they saw a 9% speed bump at 1920x1200 for the GTX 670 over the GTX 660 Ti. I don't think it's worth another $100. So, yeah I like the 660 Ti. Most of the OEMs roll their own cooling solutions, some are better than others. Some run the stock clocks faster than some of the others. <shrug>

For the 660 Ti, I'd get either the Asus Direct CU II or the MSI Twinfrozr. The Asus card is quieter, but I like MSI's cooling for the VRM circuitry better. Both would work well. Heck the Power edition version of the MSI card is down to $290 at Newegg.

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